Asia-Pacific's largest travel show OTM all set for a record edition in 2018

Close to 1,200 sellers are confirmed as exhibitors at OTM 2018, to be held at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai from January 18 to 20, 2018.Over 45 National Tourist Organisations (NTOs) and more than 21 Indian State Tourism Boards (STBs) will be setting up country and state pavilions at OTM 2018.

The largest travel show in the Asia Pacific is on target to witness 300 hosted buyers and 15,000 trade visitors. Turkey, Greece and Thailand are three largest Partner Country pavilions, returning to OTM. Turkey is the Premier Partner Country at OTM 2018. Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir are the largest Partner State pavilions this year. Host state Maharashtra is also putting up a large pavilion to showcase its destinations. The leading tour operator Cox & Kings has signed up with for the next three years as the Knowledge Partner, starting OTM 2018.

OTM has partnered with TravHQ, to organise Travel Technology Track, with sessions on innovative travel tech solutions, panel discussions with industry thought-leaders and digital skill development workshops.Phocuswright, the global travel market research company, will be also conducting a session at OTM 2018.

What makes OTM unique?

OTM Mumbai has emerged as the largest travel trade show in the Asia-Pacific region. On the two parameters - the number of participants and gross exhibition area rented by the organisers, OTM has gained an edge over ITB Asia and SATTE; the other two leading shows in the Asia Pacific region.

OTM 2017 also had participants from a larger number of countries (45) when compared to SATTE 2017 (40), as per publicly available information that can be verified.

According to a visitor survey, approximately 76 per cent of the trade visitors at OTM 2017 did not visit any other show in India. It shows OTM is visited by unique buyers from Western India and Mumbai, not accessible through any other show.

Approximately a quarter of OTM’s buyers are from outside Mumbai, out of which half are from Delhi. This data highlights that OTM is also effective in providing access to trade buyers and visitors from all over India.

Mumbai serves as a gateway city to the largest chunk of India’s outbound market. It is also the largest source market in India of business, luxury, MICE and domestic travel in India. This is a great factor behind OTM’s success and emergence as the largest travel trade show in the Asia-Pacific region. India is ranked among one of the fastest emerging travel destinations in the world as Indians continue to take more than a billion domestic and 20 million international visits annually.

The advent of online technologies has enabled the travel sector to further utilise its potential. Keeping in mind the business prospects, an easy-to-use online meeting diary to fix appointment between buyers and sellers has been scheduled this year.

To tap into the booming travel market of India, country representatives from Bulgaria, Canada, Dubai, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uzbekistan and Vietnam will also be making it to the Asia Pacific’s largest travel show.

The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India is also expected to have a strong presence at the show. Major Indian destinations, too, are not far behind their international counterparts. The Indian State Tourism Boards of Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Manipur, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Chandigarh, Punjab, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram will be ensuring their representation with a large number of sellers to showcase India at its best.

Buyer’s Turnout

More than 300 corporate buyers from renowned companies have scheduled meetings. They will be visiting the show from all over India to meet the pool of exhibitors showcasing their products and services at OTM 2018.